July 27, 2009

It's all in the newspapers by now, 13 teenagers have come back with swine flu from a camp in Ajloun, the largest number of people to contract the disease at once so far. I know a couple of people who were at the camp so I have a second-hand account of the events.

Firstly the camp, organized by Christian churches, takes place each summer and a couple of times throughout the year, and most of the participants are about 16 or 17 with older leaders and supervisors present as well. After the camp ended on Friday, two of the participants tested themselves after coming down with the symptoms and were found positive, so all those who took part in the camp were brought to the Prince Hamza Hospital, and those with a temperature of 38 or higher were quarantined and had samples taken to be tested. The results take about a day to come out.

From what I heard, the parents and those who were kept at the hospital were very disappointed with the way things were handled. The hospital is not well-equipped, conditions are far from sanitary and the section where they stay is very understaffed, with only one doctor and two nurses. The parents struggled to find a doctor to answer their questions. It makes me wonder if we really are as ready to handle an influx of cases should they happen as the Ministry of Health has been saying.

Contrary to what's being said in the newspapers, there weren't any participants from the UK, and only one from the US and one from Lebanon, and both tested out negative, so till now the source of the outbreak is still unknown. And with 6 new cases discovered today, I doubt the disease can be contained any longer.

Anyhow, Tamiflu was distributed to those who tested out negative and their families as a precaution, and those who do have swine flu are quarantined and prohibited from seeing anyone for the next 5 days. They're all doing fine though, they've got their laptops, DVDs and cards to entertain them! If you're going to go down with swine flu you might as well end up with your friends, I suppose!

7 comments:

I just want to get people aware of this swine flu more and more and take precautions accordingly. Oh man this has killed so many people. If you are interested check the article below to know all about swine flu (I have collected around 200 links to good articles and sites about swine flu)http://markthispage.blogspot.com/2009/06/all-you-want-to-know-about-swine-flu.html

I have to say the families of the patients were treated better than close contacts of American patients who don't get Tamiflu.

Again, swine flu is less risky than the regular flu. There were many cases in Jordan before the camp started and that's how participants got the disease, most likely. The virus is still cicrulating in Jordan, most likely.

thank you hareega for saying what i want to say .... "swine flu is less risky than the regular flu" and this media craze is stupid . anyways would be interesting to see the situation after haj and the divine immunity of mecca according to one microbiologist ... hope they get well soon

The thing about Tamiflu is if you take it and you don't have the swine flu it might actually decrease the immune defense against something about the virus being able to mutate and something I forgot. So people should only take it when they are really sure.

The red head from harry potter had it, and some D-list celeb slut I can't remmeber who she was..

Kiniz... it's difficult to tell, it's probably better for everyone that a mild form of it has spread around the world which would make a lot of people produce protective antibiodies, however the virus can change its genetic configuration and attack again. I do not recommend for anyone to intentionally get infected because after all the virsu can kill people or make them very sick. It's unlikely but it can happen even to healthy people. The best to prevent it is to take the vaccine. Swine flu parties is a bad idea!!